September 9th, 2008

TW Telecom today filed an 8-K with the SEC, warning that economic weakness may be spreading and may affect their growth in the near term. As readers may recall, I spent some effort trolling through the earnings reports for Q2 looking for signs that network providers are feeling economic pressure. A few saw pressure, most seemed ok but cautious, and a couple just shrugged it off. Well, TW Telecom was one of those that [Read more →]

September 6th, 2008

Last week I posted a summary of where Level 3's enterprise footprint is concentrated, this week it is the wholesale footprint - again gleaned from the new Level 3 interactive map. From their breakdown, I count as their wholesale footprint all wireless switching centers, neutral colocations, carrier hotels, and local central offices. This is the more traditional Level 3 footprint and [Read more →]

September 5th, 2008

We've heard many tidbits relating to internet traffic growth lately, let's connect a few of the dots. Cogent says traffic growth has really slowed, Global Crossing is seeing triple digits, and the rest see no substantive change in how many bits are on their network. Akamai says they're seeing less traffic, Limelight disagrees. All in all, [Read more →]

September 5th, 2008

With the apparent sudden death of the InvestorVillage message boards, I have been pushed to action. In that poll I ran just a few days ago, the top suggestion was discussion forums, and so I thought what the heck. I mean, even if nobody shows up I still get to mess around with my website and I just love doing that. And yet, there was no urgency at first. [Read more →]

September 3rd, 2008

In a new article today, Telegeography says the internet grew at a 53% clip over the last twelve months. That's a solid rate, although it is down a bit from last year's 61%. It certainly doesn't match up with the slow growth rates Cogent has been reporting lately, but nor does it match up with the much higher rates Global Crossing has been reporting. It probably falls in line with what Level 3 has been saying about traffic. [Read more →]

September 3rd, 2008

So they really meant it... In late 2007 and early 2008, Global Crossing said they were going to leverage Impsat's hosting and colocation business in an expansion to Europe, and today's PR suggests they are having some success. Of course, Global Crossing was last seen in the colocation and hosting business back in October of 2000, when they sold their GlobalCenter division to Exodus at the end of the bubble. For those keeping score, Exodus then went bankrupt within a year, got bought by C&W USA, which in turn [Read more →]

September 3rd, 2008

Ars technica put out a fantastic article yesterday on the structure of the internet. Discussions of transit and peering and the business models that are built out of them can get hairy very easily, what this article does is explain why networks do what they do in very clear, down to earth language. The do a very good job on one topic that frequently eludes even the techs amongst us: [Read more →]

September 2nd, 2008

Business Week has a nice article on how MLB is taking advantage of the internet nowadays. With the Olympics and the conventions going on, the content world has almost been ignoring little things like MLBAM (Major League Baseball Advanced Media). But as we leave those behind, the World Series looms as possibly the next big CDN event. I particularly liked this quote: [Read more →]

September 1st, 2008

August was a sleepy month. Pageviews, Visits, and Unique Visitors all dropped slightly from July to 25,500, 12,500, and 5,100. I chalk that up to a few factors: 1) July was huge, 2) the telecom world goes on vacation in August, and 3) sector news was light, on account of 2). Hopefully things will pick up again after Labor Day. In defiance of this slowdown, ranking relative to peers continued to advance - which implies that August is just sleepy and that's all there is to it. [Read more →]

August 31st, 2008

Level 3 has had a new interactive map of their USA network assets available on their website for some time now, and it has a wealth of information. If you click on each city, they break down how many of each type of on-net building they have in that city. Or to be more specific that they had at the time of the map's creation - nobody updates these things in real time of course. So this presents a busybody (me) on a long weekend with the chance to actually go city by city and run some numbers. Want to know just where Level 3 has an enterprise business and where it doesn't? [Read more →]

August 29th, 2008

With their stock price surging, up 20% in just a few days, this little known metro/colo company seems to be on the move. There have been no press releases, I haven't turned up any analyst reports, and basically nothing really new seems to have happened. Could there be M&A in the air? I do think it is possible, but I haven't heard any of those rumors either. [Read more →]

August 29th, 2008

Obama gave his speech last night, and I was able to watch it live in HD and it was just astounding! Big deal, you're saying, we all did. Yeah, but I'm in Beijing right now. Yes, the one in China. And not in some fancy hotel with a high powered internet link either - just a basic, slower than average DSL line in an ordinary apartment building. Even wonderful YouTube, in all its low-res [Read more →]